Monday, February 20, 2012

My Fruit Of The Month post for February 2012 coincides perfectly with today's holiday. Here in the U.S., we celebrate President's Day today! I can remember when we celebrated Lincoln's and Washington's birthdays on separate holidays, but these days they have to share.

This candy box is a patriotic variety of the classic Mike and Ike called Stripes. The candies were red, white and blue, of course, flavored as cherry, blueberry and vanilla cream.

The little fruit guys here were on other Mike and Ike boxes in the early to mid 2000s. They were typically a cherry and a lemon, but here the lemon is morphed into a blueberry for the special occasion.

Also, I'm presenting this Just Born sales flier which shows us that the Stripes candy was introduced for President's Day in 2002 -- 10 years ago!

I hope this makes you feel extra patriotic today, setting aside political differences to remember what makes our country great.

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Here's the Fruit Of The Month winner for December 2011. Expanding from last month's winner, Orangehead, Ferrara Pan has assembled some of his friends on a delightful new Christmas themed box.

Chewy Lemonhead & Friends are now Frosty Chewy Lemonhead & Friends. Lemonhead, Cherryhead and Applehead are having a good time making snowballs in their Santa hats amidst a beautiful green backdrop.

Interestingly enough, the lemon candies inside are white instead of the usual yellow. Along with the green Appleheads and red Cherryheads, the now-white Lemonheads fit in nicely with the holiday colors.

Congratulations and thanks to the Ferrara Pan candy company for a wonderful new stocking stuffer!

Orangeheads were introduced in March of 1996 as an extension of their popular Lemonhead candy line. Small semi-hard candies with a softer, flaky candy shell, these are really tasty.

Quite unfortunately, I have to report that Orangehead was discontinued earlier this year. I've confirmed that fact with a Ferrara Pan company representative. :-(

Here's a box that I saved from 2008. The good old Orangehead mascot has looked the same on the box ever since the product's inception.

When the Chewy Lemonhead & Friends assorted pack was introduced, it included a chewy version of Orangheads along with the other flavors. Tastes just like the original Orangheads, but softer on the teeth.

Here's a box of those that I saved from 2008. You can see that they gave Orangehead a redesign here, but that redesign never made it to the regular Orangehead box, as far as I've seen at least. Applehead, Grapehead and Cherryhead, however, got their own new box designs earlier this year.

While regular Orangehead has been discontinued, fortunately the chewy version is still in the Chewy Lemonhead & Friends pack. Hopefully that will not change. Long live Orangehead!

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Since we are closing in on Halloween, I picked an appropriate choice for Fruit Of The Month. For October 2011, I'm highlighting Pumpkin-Face Bubble Gum!

Pumpkin-Face Bubble Gum was a holiday creation from Fleer, makers of myriad cool and creative gum products over the years. The company was especially on a roll in the 1980s, which is when this package was made.

Pumpkin-Face gum was introduced to the market in 1982 (reference). By the 1990s, the package was re-designed to look like this.

The pumpkin, or jack-o-lantern here proclaims itself as "sweet 'n juicy", although pumpkin flavor gum does not sound all that appealing to me. I don't remember trying this product before, but it's a fun little collectible.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

My apologies in advance for stooping to this level, but here's a fun little product mascot that needed to be documented.

This gross looking guy is, well, a booger. Boogerman is his name, and he once represented Boogers and Stretchy Boogers gummy candy products in the 1980s and 1990s. If you can look past the "yuck" factor, it's a fun candy salesman who seems to be full of personality.

Stretchy Boogers candy was made in Argentina and imported into the US by Confex.

According to US trademark records, Boogerman was first used in commerce in August 1988 (see logo trademark submission here). Apparently there was first a plain "Boogers" candy in 1988 (see trademark submission here), followed by Stretchy Boogers in December 1989 (see trademark submission here.)

Here's an old candy wrapper I have, which is not dated, but would be from the very late 1980s or more likely the early 1990s. Boogerman is sampling the goods there atop the logo. Also of interesting note is the assortment of other flavors and shapes, including Goopy Grape, Lumpy Lemon, Clingy Cherry and Wobble Melon. I'd like to find those, too!

I found a small image of the original "Boogers" candy wrapper -- also with Boogerman on it -- in the November 1989 issue of Spy magazine. See that magazine on-line here and scroll down to page 9 and look at the bottom of that page.

On the back of the package we see a different image of Boogerman, imploring kids to send in their best booger jokes. Winners would be picked (sorry) to have their jokes printed on a wrapper. Pretty cool.

Surprisingly, I found these candy Boogers mentioned in a 1989 Time magazine article which underscored the product's popularity among kids. See the Time article here. Time also makes reference to the mascot's name along with costumed Boogerman promotional appearances. Oh, I'd love to see some of those photos!

Saturday, August 20, 2011

I noticed last year that American Licorice introduced a new box design for their Sour Punch Bits, so I thought I would show the before and after photos.

Here are the tangerine-lemonade boxes first from 2009 and then 2010 below. Fortunately, the little Sour Punch mascots made the leap onto the new boxes. The new design seems to stand out more, so I'd say it was a good move.

Saturday, July 30, 2011

The Fruit Of The Month award for July 2011 goes to none other than Loud-Mouth Lime! LML was one of the original flavors of Pillsbury Funny Face drink mix in 1964, along with Goofy Grape, Rootin'-Tootin' Raspberry, Injun Orange, Freckle Face Strawberry and Chinese Cherry. Together they quenched a lot of thirsts in the groovy 1960s.

Here's an unopened, vintage pack from 1965-1966. This was a second series pack.

By 1967, the lime flavor was discontinued. Lefty Lemon became Lefty Lemon-Lime. Our friend Loud-Mouth Lime took on a new persona (and flavor) as Loud-Mouth Punch. Compare the two packs below. The Punch pack is from the early '70s, but it's still basically the same mascot, lime-shaped but now with a really snazzy hat.

Take a look at this vintage commercial on YouTube:

Several years ago, Funko put out an awesome set of Wacky Wobbler bobblehead figures, expertly designed in the likeness of six of our Funny Face friends. Loud-Mouth Lime somehow did not make the cut in that set. However, I'm happy to report that last month Funko released this wonderful new LML bobblehead!

Really cool.

Also in modern Funny Face news, there's still a cartoon series in the works, as I've posted previously on this blog. Take a look at a newly animated Loud-Mouth Lime in this cartoon short on Daily Motion.

[:::] Who is this Waffle Whiffer?

I love advertising characters from restaurants and products, especially cereal. I'm interested in product packaging, commercials, toys and other collectibles from the 1960s to today. I welcome your comments and information you wish to share. Keep everything family friendly.